Wireless local area networks (WLANs) are becoming more widespread as wireless technology continues to become more advanced, and variations of wireless networks may exist. For example, a traditional WLAN might be based on a structured infrastructure system that includes a base station which communicates with wireless devices and routes traffic between them. An additional type of wireless network is an ad-hoc network, where a wireless device communicates with one or more additional wireless devices in a point-to-point technique where wireless devices connect to, and disconnect from, the network dynamically.
As a combination of the traditional system structure and an ad-hoc network, a mesh network may include user devices, terminals, access points (APs), and base stations, which all function as mesh points (MPs) in the wireless system. Mesh networks have been garnering increasing support in the standards community due to characteristics such as low-effort coverage extension for WLANs, low-effort and low-complexity self-deploying WLANs, and for their high fault-tolerance and redundancy.
In a WLAN mesh, a set of two or more MPs are interconnected via IEEE 802.11 links. Each Mesh Point (MP) on a mesh network receives and transmits its own traffic, while acting as a router or relay node for other devices.
The IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) standard also specifies support for multicasting as part of asynchronous services. A multicast packet includes a group address that delivers the same packet to more than one destination. This is particularly useful for instance when some specific type of data traffic (e.g., streaming services) is meant to be received by several nodes in the network.
In WLAN systems, the definition of multicast may include the following: “A medium access control (MAC) address that has the group bit set. A multicast MAC service data unit (MSDU) is one with a multicast destination address. A multicast MAC protocol data unit (MPDU) or control frame is one with a multicast receiver address.” Hence, an Access Point (AP) (in Infrastructure mode) or a station (STA) or Client (in Ad-hoc mode) transmits a frame over the air with a multicast destination address, which is then decoded by the receivers that have subscribed to this service and multicast address.
There is a need, however, to transmit concatenated frames in a wireless communication system that is not subject to the limitations of the prior art.